The Japanese industrial conglomerate raised a fourth, $400m fund, which will focus on AI, frontier tech and push further into India.

Hitachi, the Japanese industrial conglomerate, increased the amount it is investing in startups to $1bn, with the launch of its fourth corporate venture fund with a $400m allocation. The new fund will increase Hitachi’s ability to invest in generative AI startups, said Keiji Kojima, the company’s president and CEO.

“Hitachi’s efforts in CVC, which began in 2019 with US$150m, have expanded to US$1bn in five years, driven in part by the disruptive innovation brought about by generative AI,” Kojima said.

Hitachi joins a small but growing number of companies that have allocated more than $1bn to corporate venture investments in the past few years. According to the most recent GCV Keystone global benchmarking survey, just 7% of corporate venture units have assets under management of this size. Many companies that have beefed up their investment allocation have done so specifically to invest in AI.

Stefan Gabriel, CEO and managing director of Hitachi Ventures (pictured above) said: “While topping up our [assets under management] to $1bn, Hitachi Ventures will be able to keep the speed of venture investing in future unicorns of fast changing growth markets in upcoming (new) regions that create strategic and technical relevance for Hitachi’s businesses.”

Hitachi Ventures operates from four hubs in Munich, Silicon Valley, Boston and India. Gabriel told Global Corporate Venturing that the new fund would allow Hitachi to deepen involvement in India. India has been a growing focus for a number of corporate investors in the past year with companies such as Amazon and Jaguar Land Rover increasing investment focus in the country.

AI-related investments will be a strong theme for the new fund, with Hitachi highlighting data centers, distributed energy systems, future of work and industrial AI as focus areas. In addition the fund will invest in other frontier technologies, including bio, quantum, nuclear fusion, life science, space and adjacent technologies.

In the five years since it was set up Hitachi Ventures has invested in 38 startup portfolio companies, including more than five that have “unicorn” valuations of more than $1bn. The unicorns in the Hitachi Ventures portfolio include Ascend Elements, Weka, Arsenal Biosciences, and Rescale.

Around half of the portfolio companies are working with Hitachi’s business units, including AI and data platform Makersite, carbon dioxide removal company Captura, and Archetype AI, which provides AI foundational models and applications for real-world sensor data.

Maija Palmer

Maija Palmer is editor of Global Venturing and puts together the weekly email newsletter (sign up here for free).